GREENVILLE — A familiar face to Greenville girls soccer players will be taking the reins of the soccer program.

Chris Hamman will take over as varsity coach, replacing Nathan Lewis.

Lewis said he was leaving the position “just to spend more time with my family.”

“The reason I coached was because I felt like I was hopefully helping kids learn about life and live it successfully, but I finally realized my kids couldn’t have that with my being gone all the time,” Lewis said.

Lewis led the Yellow Jackets to a 10-9-1 record this past spring.

“My first year we went 1-17,” he said. “The last four years we were above .500 every year.”

Hamman wants to see if he can translate the success he had with the boys over to the girls program.

“It wasn’t something I had thought about too much before,” Hamman said. “But the more I thought about it I like the idea of coaching at the varsity level with the girls like I’ve done with the boys and seeing if we couldn’t make some good things happen.”

Hamman has coached some of the girls before on the JV level.

“There’s a pretty good core of girls coming back, quite a few who played for me when I coached them on JV,” he said. “So there is some familiarity there.”

Hamman won’t be able to do much right away, but he’s made some plans to get started with the girls program.

“In high school you’re limited as to when to practice,” he said. “So the actual practice time I both seasons is short. The conditioning things can take a little more time. Because other sports are going on there are some agility kind of things and conditioning things, Tim O’Brien runs those and we encourage the girls to do that. Some girls are playing indoor soccer.”

Hamman noted there won’t be much of a tactical change in philosophy as head coach.

“I don’t know that there was a great deal of difference as far as tactically between the boys and the girls even when Nathan was coaching them,” he said. “Because of us both doing the boys and girls we talked about what kind of things that we’re doing, and what works with one team can carry over to the other. Systems are great so you have to make adjustments as you go along. You don’t know what that’s going to be until you get out there and play.”

Hamman expects a tough go of it in the new O-K Bronze Conference.

“I think we’re going to be competitive,” he said. “The conference will have some tough games.”

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Never say never. For a good portion of the game on Wednesday it looked like the Greenville Yellow Jackets would never find the back of the net in an O-K White soccer match against the Northview Wildcats.

The rain and slick conditions did not affect the play of the Greenville Yellow Jackets girls soccer team. The Yellow Jackets jumped out to a quick lead and ended the game early with a 9-1 non conference mercy over the Grand Rapids Union Red Hawks on Monday night at home.

The Greenville boys soccer season didn’t go as well as coach Chris Hamman would have liked it to. The Yellow Jackets finished with a 5-13 overall and 2-8 in the O-K Bronze Conference. That was fifth out of the seven teams in the conference.

The Greenville Yellow Jackets soccer team begins the new season in a new conference and with goals of improving. The Yellow Jackets — now in the O-K Bronze — return five letter winners from last year’s 4-13 (2-8) team. Returning are Neil Frank, Kyle Reamer, Mark Hebert, Ben Golden and Randy Hebert.